Voyage of Ice (18 page)

“Elizabeth's hungry. Fact is, we're both hungry. All we have is a little more than two kegs of hard bread left.”

Garret stood and braced himself against the whaleboat. Clouds of breath steamed from him. He said nothing, couldn't talk really, panting as he was. Even in the darkness, his skin looked pale, and his freckles seemed frozen solid. His nose and cheeks were frostnipped, white and hard. I don't know why, but my scalp crawled as if it suddenly swarmed with bugs. “Garret, what's wrong?”

He blinked slowly. “Sorry, Nick, I thought you knowed. We don't got no food.”

“But—I thought …” My voice trailed off and I turned away. I couldn't look at him anymore.
They're starving. Terrible starving. Worse than us.
Jutting cheekbones, hollowed eyes, short-ened breath, all of it. I'd been blind not to see it before.

“All we had was the hard bread in the lantern-keg,” Garret was saying. “Briggs 'pooned a seal once, but it didn't last long. We drank its blood first, and ate the skin too, fur and all. Another time, Sweet trapped a fox, but we ate it in a day. Couldn't keep the fellows off of it. Ate it like they was savages or something. I— I'm sorry, Nick, I'm just so—” Garret's voice faltered.

“What?”

To my surprise, he fell against the whaleboat and began to weep. Deep, wrenching, horrible sobs.

My blood turned to ice as the familiar terror clawed up my chest. “Garret, what is it? Tell me.”

He shook his head, brushing his face on his sleeve. “It's just that I'm so tired of being
hungry.
”

I patted his back, helpless, until he finally told me to go away and leave him be.

The sound of his crying trailed behind me as I stumbled back to the shelter. I lay next to Elizabeth. She was sleeping. I squeezed my eyes shut, teeth clenched, biting back the terror that swarmed inside of me like worms in a corpse.

Nothing to eat.

Nothing except a couple kegs of hard bread, divided between eleven people now instead of three.

At noon the next day, under a twilight sky, Henry Sweet, being the only mate who'd survived the shipwreck, called the crew together.

“I don't care what ye fetch,” he told us, his black eyebrows powdered with ice and drawn together serious-like, fox cap snugged over his ears, “just so long as ye fetch it quick. Seals, bears, foxes—I even heard they have some kind of deer up here, though I ain't seen one. We've got weapons now that we didn't have before, so maybe we'll have better luck. Go two by two. Stay by the shore. Don't wander or ye'll be lost forever in this darkness. Bones, ye stay behind and look after Thorndike's daughter and keep the fire a-burning. Hopefully we'll be bringing ye a feast.”

Briggs smirked. “Nick's a fine nursemaid, he is. Comes high recommended.”

“Shut up, Briggs,” snapped Dexter. “He's got far more nerve than you'll ever have. He fought off a bear when you'd've likely peed your pants.”

“Boys! Boys!” Sweet held out stiffened arms between the two. “Don't be a-wasting your energies on fighting. We've all got to be thinking 'bout surviving. Our womenfolk at home need us to be calm. Now pick your hunting partner and be off with ye.”

Twelve hours later, the last hunting party straggled back to camp. No one had caught anything. “We're whalemen,” grum-bled Briggs, flinging his harpoon aside, “not deer hunters.”

A mask of ice weighing several pounds covered Garret's face. “I told Carrot Sticks not to chew tobacco,” said Dexter, leading him into our shelter. “Told him beards only make things worse, but he wouldn't listen.”

Garret couldn't talk, his mouth sealed in a muzzle of ice and tobacco juice. One eye peeped at us, the other frozen under the mask. We set him near the fire and chipped away at his face. After several hours, it was all off, and we finished the job by shaving his beard with a sheathing knife.

“Never again,” said Garret, spitting out his wad of tobacco once he could move his mouth.

The next day Sweet sent everyone out again. And the day after that. And the day after that. Meanwhile, Garret's skin peeled off from his hairline to his Adam's apple. We joked and said we were having peeled carrots for supper, but somehow he didn't think that was funny.

Peeling your skin must be good luck, though, because the next day Garret and Dexter trapped several fat white hens with feathery legs. We made biscuit and fat white hen soup with milk. Though watery, it was delicious, and we made it stretch for a few days. But it didn't stop me from dreaming about custard pie and hot biscuits and fish chowder and the smell of flour on Aunt Agatha's hands.

One night I started awake, custard pie crumbling to ice in my mouth.

Something's wrong.

The blubber lamp was near out, the fire cold. A gray fog hovered near the ceiling. I glanced at Elizabeth, but she lay
sleeping, her breathing steady. Dexter and Garret lay on the other side of her, both out to the world. Quietly, I pulled on my boots, lined with fat white hen feathers. Outside the shelter a sharp wind blew from the north. I pulled up my collar and yanked down my stocking cap, expecting to hear Ninny greet me. Instead, the wind moaned. Snow swirled round the ground in gusts.

I peered inside Ninny's half cask. “Here, girl.”

The cask was empty.

I picked up Ninny's rope. It had been cut cleanly, as with a knife.

It was then I noticed a soft glow coming from the shore. Taking a deep breath, knowing what I would find but having to go anyways, I headed in that direction. Long before I arrived, I saw him.

Broad shoulders hunched over the fire, Briggs gnawed on a meaty shank, his pimply face glistening with grease. When he saw me, he stopped chewing.

“You killed her,” I said, fists clenched.

He grinned and shrugged.

“You
stole
her! You didn't even let me say good-bye.”

“Poor baby,” he said with a sneer.

“And now you're hogging her all to yourself. You can't even see fit to share with your friends. You're a pig, Briggs. You hear me? A pig.”

Briggs licked his fingers noisily and kept eating. “Shut up, Bones. I'm sick of you and your holier-than-thou ways. If 'twas up to you, we'd all die, we would. You're too stupid for your own good.”

I choked back bile, hating his smug face covered with grease. I hated his easy smile, his arrogance. With a will, though, I closed my eyes and forced my fists to unclench.
Hatred never solves anything
,
I thought, remembering Captain Thorndike and how I'd once hated him. “I can't let you eat another bite.” I opened my eyes, surprised my voice sounded so steady.

“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it, Bones? Eh, Bones? Gonna wrestle me for it?” Briggs smiled. “Tell you what. It'll be our secret. You and me. Why tell the others? I got some here just for you. Been saving it for you.” He held up another meaty leg. When I didn't take it, his eyes narrowed. “You breathe one word about this, Bones, I swear, I'll—”

“Sure, I'll take it.”

I could see the surprise on Briggs' face as I took the leg and sat beside him. After a moment, he grunted, shrugged, and tore off another bite.

“Say, we need some grog, don't we, Briggs? I can't eat goat without grog.”

“Huh?”

“Wouldn't you like some grog to warm you?”

“I like grog.”

“Why don't I sing for some grog?”

“Huh?”

I began to sing.
“It's all for me grog, me jolly, jolly grog, all gone for beer and tobacco! Spent all me tin on the lassies drinking gin, and across the western ocean I must wander!”

Briggs stared at me, swallowing goat with a gulp.

“C'mon, Briggs, what are you waiting for? Join in!” I kept singing. Louder, louder, till I was near screaming. Blood vessels bulged in my neck. My temples pounded.
“Where are me boots, me noggy noggy boots
, they've all gone for beer and tobacco!
The leather's kicked about and the soles are all worn out, and my toes are looking out for better weather!”

I could hear shouts of “Shut up!”, sounds of men stirring, Dexter saying, “It's Nick! Down by the shore!”

Briggs still stared at me, his mouth hanging open, bits of meat stuck between his teeth.

I burst my lungs singing.
“I feel sick in the head and I haven't been to bed since first I came ashore with me plunder! I see centipedes and snakes and I'm full of pains and aches, and I think that I should push out over yonder!”

By this time the entire camp had gathered, save Elizabeth.

I stopped singing, panting, my chest heaving. Dexter laid a gloved hand on my arm. “It's all right.”

Sweet grabbed a meaty bone from Briggs. “Ye coward! What do ye mean by eating the goat all yourself?”

Briggs cast me a dark look. “My belly's about stuck to my backbone. I'm hungry all the time and it hurts. I got to have meat, I do. Red meat.”

“Oh,” said Dexter. “Like none of the rest of us have bellies or backbones.”

Sweet sighed. “Well, boys, looks like grub's on. Garret, divide up the meat. Equal portions for everyone, including Elizabeth. None for Briggs. He's eaten his lot and more.”

“Aye, sir,” said Garret.

Back at the shelter, I woke Elizabeth. “Here, eat this.”

“What is it?”

“Food.”

She took it from me with trembling hands.

While she ate, I ate too, afterward licking my fingers over and over. When I was finished, I lay back down, crying softly. Because my heart ached for Ninny, and because I wanted more.

Two weeks before Christmas, Elizabeth sat up, her eyes clear of fever. The next day, she stepped out of the shelter for the first time in over three weeks. Like a child on Christmas morn, she gazed about her at all the new arrivals.

I told her how none of the others had survived, so far as we knew. Cole, Walker, Cook, Duff, and others, all gone. She just nodded, her jaw set in that now familiar line.

That evening, in celebration of Elizabeth's recovery, every-one gathered round a fire, where we sang sea chanteys, and everyone had a swallow of grog. My heart warmed from the grog and from seeing Elizabeth smile, throwing her head back to laugh. She sang softly, coughing sometimes, blushing at the bawdy words, whispering to me between songs that she'd grown up listening to those songs, and by fire, it was good to sing them finally!

Then Garret began to sing a ballad. His voice filled my insides like hot syrup in snow, the tenor tones rich and warm. Tears misted my eyes and I brushed my face with my glove.
“And it's home, dearie, home! oh, it's home I want to be. My topsails are hoisted, and I must out to sea, for the oak, and the ash, and the bonny birchen tree, they're all a-growin' green in the North Countree; oh, it's home, dearie, home! oh, it's home I want to be.”

I heard sighs all round. A sniffle or two. Elizabeth grasped my hand. Her eyes shimmered. “We'll get there someday,” I whis-pered. “I promise.”

She laid her head on my shoulder. Warm, delicious feelings flooded me, and I looked out across the group. Sweet, Garret, Dexter, all had that misty-eyed look too. But when I looked at Briggs, it was like an icicle stabbing my heart. He sat by himself, sucking the marrow out of one of Ninny's bones, staring at Elizabeth with hard, narrowed eyes. And in the depths of his eyes I saw a meanness and a hunger, the way he must have looked at Ninny before he slit her throat.

'd heard the yarn many a time—in the fo'c'sle, lounging round the windlass during the dogwatch. It was a true story about the whaleship
Essex
from Nantucket, about how she was stove by a maddened sperm whale and sank in the middle of nowhere, leaving behind twenty men in three whaleboats to survive best they could with just a few ships' biscuit between them. They did survive. A few of them, anyways. They survived by killing and eating their mates.

It was Briggs' favorite yarn.

Even now, when we huddled round the fire as lights danced and swirled above our heads in the cold, endless Arctic night, Briggs told it all the time, ignoring everyone who told him to shut up.

Whenever he told it, he giggled, a crazy, hungry laugh that made goose pimples crawl over my flesh as if it were my bones split in two, crunched between teeth; as if it were my marrow being sucked and swallowed.